I'm crunched for time right now, so i thought i'd throw up a few old sketchbook pages.
These were around the time of the Broadminded story i did... note the girls belly aching to pop out a little?
Some of the 'plot points' are littering these art doodles.. sometimes i'll do them in color, one for each 20 page issue or chapter.... Obviously i lost more time on Charlie's shoulder and bicep and the Ira's girlfriends outfit that i did anything else..
above, just doodling between the of blue lines in the notebook.
I always like looking at how different artists-writers plot a story... it's always different. Some let the visuals set the pace, some write it out, or a little of both. It's telling ... what key words a writer uses to sum up a sequence. Be it either thumbnails or written sentences.
Interesting that above, Four Women was part of a group of ideas... Legs too.. 'Kalamazoo' eventually morphed the Soccer Queen story in later Maxx issues. Special Ed was something my Cousin Dave and I kicked around, then abandoned.
The 'Mother Daughter' idea went through dozens of several incarnations... which finally grew so large i split it into four parts ~ which later became the four stages of 'Dana' life. ( I know, where *is* it, right? Coming SOON, i promise!) It's hard when things seem 'alive' in my head, but before they come out of my pen of pencil, they don't exist yet for you guys, huh?
What was 'Men and War' on that list above? Don't even remember. I do know 'guy' action stories, politics or war issues never hold my attention like dysfunctional mom daughter stuff does, so i imagine any War plots... just faded away.
I sometimes did these on the backs of pages too, so some have bleed throughs that look kinda ruddy.
Lucky a few are on one side, so their less busy. I also was fiddling with those colored pencils, soft leads, a little color... but mostly just seeing where a sharpie took me.
There's always something 'revealed' about sketches, it's so personal. Flawed. It's like nothing's polished or fixed yet. It's all raw and exposed there, for better and worse.
I always thought my fashion stuff dated way back to Zerogirl, (remember the square headed mom?) But i can see some of that fashion stuff scattered even these old sketches too.
Fashion designs just never pops up much in super hero comics, do they? So it never found an out let. Just bubbled away. These are a lot like everyone else's doodles, which is the point. Just letting the our imaginations go where they go.. even if it's a dead end.
